I haven't been able to get into mine in over an hour. I called the local office and the line was busy so evidently there is a problem but I can't access any of their websites to check on how long they might be out. I am expecting an important communication from my professors. It was okay earlier today.

Nine times out of ten, they'll simply lie to you. The company line is that nothing ever goes wrong with their services (aside from "routine maintenance," of course), whether it's RoadRunner, cable TV, or phone service.

For example, the network status page for TWC's Orange County operation says there hasn't been an interruption in service since a planned outage back in early February. In fact, there have been four major outages since then. My support calls to TWC on each of those occasions resulted in the "support" person telling me the problem must be something with my setup, and trying to get me to do the monkey dance of rebooting this, reconnecting that, and reconfiguring the other. When I insisted the problem was at their end, I was informed that I was wrong, but that they were happy to send someone out (in about a week), subject to the proviso that I'd be charged for the visit, because the problem was with my equipment. When I explained that, as a network engineer responsible for high throughput enterprise networks, I have been trained to recognize when a connection light is not lit, it was as if the person on the other end had their fingers in their ears. They just repeated the party line and asked me if I wanted to pay for a home visit.

I then tried to get them to check with their network engineers, in case the outage hadn't been communicated to customer service yet, but I might as well have been asking them to call the CEO at home and ask him. No, I was assured, the computers were infallible and any problems would show up on them instantly.

In each and every case, the network popped back to life of its own accord (usually hours later) and my connection then worked as well as it ever has.

On a couple of occasions, the outage took out the cable TV, the Internet and the phone, all at the same time. This, more than anything else, is a good reason not to get all your comms services from the same provider.

None of this helps you with your email problem, of course, but it may save you time waiting on the phone for some drone to try to use a network outage to generate some additional fees for his/her employer.

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